THE GROWING POWER OF WESTERN EUROPE,

16401715

If the reader were to take a map of Europe, set a compass on the city of Paris,
and draw a circle
with a radius of 500 miles, a zone would be marked out from which much of
modern European and
Western civilization radiated after about 1640. It was within this zone that a
secular society, modern natural science, a developed capitalism, the modern
state, parliamentary government, democratic ideas, machine industry, and much
else either originated or received their first full expression. The extreme western
parts of EuropeIreland, Portugal, and Spainwere somewhat outside the zone
in whiph the most rapid changes occurred. But within it were England, southern
Scotland, France, the Low Countries, Switzerland, western and central Germany,
and northern Italy. This area, for over 200 years beginning in the seventeenth
century, was the earths principal center of what anthropologists might call
cultural diffusion. Although the economy and culture of western Europe were
deeply influenced by the expanding trade and contacts with people outside
Europe,
the growing power of western European states, trading companies, science, and
cultural
institutions had a profound and spreading impact on the rest of Europe, the
Americas, and
ultimately the whole world.

This western European influence grew steadily in the half-century following

the Ptace
of Westphalia. The fading out of the Italian Renaissance, the subsiding of
religious wars,
the ruin of the Holy Roman Empire, and the decline of Spain all cleared the stage
on which
the Dutch, English, and French were to become the principal political, economic,
and

cultural actors. But the Dutch were few in number, and the English during most
of the sev
enteenth century were weakened by domestic discord. It was France that for a
time played
the most imposing role. The whole half-century of European history following the
Peace
of Westphalia is in fact often called the Age of Louis XIV.

17. THE GRANDMONARQUE AND THE BALANCE OF POWER

This king of France inherited his throne in 1643 at the age of 5, assumed the
personal
direction of affairs in 1661 at the age of 23, and reigned for 72 years until his
death in

1715. No one else in modern history has held so powerful a position for so long a
time.
Louis XIV was more than a figurehead. For over half a century, during his whole
adult life,
he was the actual and working head of the French government. Inheriting the
state institu
tions that Richelieu had developed earlier in the seventeenth century, he made
France the
strongest country in Europe. Using French money, by bribes or other
inducements, he built
up a pro-French interest in virtually every country from England to Turkey. His
policies
and the counterpolicies that others adopted against him set the pace of public
events, and
his methods of government and administration, war and diplomacy, became a
model for
other rulers to copy. During this time the French language, French thought and
literature,
French architecture and landscape gardens, and French styles in clothes,
cooking, and eti
quette became the accepted standard for Europe. Louis XIV was called by his
fascinated
admirers Louis the Great, the Grand Monarque, and the Sun King.

Internationally, the consuming political question of the last decades of the

seventeenth
century (at least in western Europeeastern Europe we reserve for the next
chapter) was
the fate of the still vast possessions of the Spanish crown. Spain was drifting
into a condition that nineteenth-century Europeans would later ascribe to Turkey,
the sick man of Europe. To its social and economic decline was added
hereditary physical deterioration of its rulers. In 1665 the Spanish throne was

inherited by Charles H, an incompetent ruler afflicted by many ills of mind and

body, impotent, mentally deficient, the pitiable product of generations of
intermarriage among various branches of the extended Habsburg family. His rule
was irresolute and feeble. It was known from the moment of his accession that
he could have no children and that the Spanish branch of the Habsburg family
would die out with his death. The whole future not only of Spain but also of the
Spanish Netherlands, the Spanish holdings in Italy, and all Spanish America was
therefore in question. Charles H dragged out his miserable days until 1700, the
object of jealousy and outright assault during his lifetime, and precipitating a
new European war by his death.

Louis XIV, who in his youth married a sister of Charles II, intended to
benefit from the debility of his royal brother-in-law. His expansionist policies
followed two main lines. One was to push the French borders eastward to the
Rhine, annexing the Spanish Netherlands (or Belgium)
and the Franche-Comt or Free County of Burgundy, a French-speaking region
lying between ducal Burgundy and Switzerland (see maps, pp. 144145, 149).
Such policies along Frances eastern frontier involved the further
dismemberment of the Holy Roman Empire. The other line of Louis Xlvs
ambitions, increasingly clear as time went on, was his hope of obtaining the
entire Spanish inheritance for himself. By combining the resources of France and
Spain he would make France supreme in Europe, in America, and on the sea. To
promote these ends Louis XIV intrigued with the smaller and middle-sized powers
of Europe and also contacted dissidents (i.e., potential allies) in all the countries
whose governments opposed him. If Louis XIV had achieved his aims, he would
have created the universal monarchy dreaded by diplomats, that is to say, a
political situation in which one state might subordinate all others to its will. The
technique used against universal monarchy was the balance of power. Universal
monarchy had formerly been almost achieved in Europe by
the Austro-Spanish Habsburgs. The Habsburg supremacy had been blocked
mainly by
a balance of power headed by France, of which the Thirty Years War and the
Peace of
Westphalia were the outstanding triumphs. Now, in the seventeenth century, the
danger of
universal monarchy came from France, and it was against France that the
balance of power
was directed.
The Idea of the Balance of Power

The aim of statesmen pursuing policies of balance of power in the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries was generally to preserve their own independence of
action to the utmost. Hence the basic rule was to ally against any powerful state
threatening domination. If one state seemed to dictate too much, others would
shun alliance with it unless they were willing (from ideological sympathy or other
reasons) to become its puppets. They would seek alliance with the other weaker
states instead. They would thus create a balance or counterweight, or restore
the balance, against the state whose ascendancy they feared. Another more
subtle reason for preferring alliance with the weak rather than with the strong
was that in such an alliance the leaders of each state could believe their own
contribution to be necessary and valued, and by threatening to withdraw their
support could win consideration of their own policies. Indeed, the balance of
power may be defined as a system in which each state tends to throw its weight
where it is most needed, so that its own importance may be enhanced.

The purpose of balance-of-power politics was not to preserve peace but to

preserve the sovereignty and independence of the states of Europe, or the
liberties of Europe, as they were called, against potential aggressors. The
system was effective as a means to protect most sovereign governments in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Combinations were intricate, and
alliances were readily made and unmade to deal with emerging situations. One
reason for the effectiveness of the system lay in the great number of states
capable of pursuing an independent
foreign policy. These included not only the greater and middle-sized states of
Austria, Spain, France, England, Holland, Sweden, and Bavaria, but a great
number of small independent states, such as Denmark, the German
principalities, Portugal after 1640, and Savoy, Venice, Genoa, and Tuscany. States
moved easily from one alliance to another or from one side of the balance to
another. They were held back by no ideologies or historic sympathies, especially
after the religious wars subsided, but could freely choose or reject allies, aiming
only to protect their own independence or enlarge their own interests. Moreover,
owing to the military technology of the day, small states might count as
important military partners in an alliance. By controlling a strategic location, like
the king of
Denmark, or by malcing a contribution of ships or money, like the Dutch
Republic, they might add just enough strength to an alliance to balance and
overbalance the opposing great power and its allies.
As the ambitions of Louis XIV became bolder, and as the capacity of Spain
to resist

them withered away, the prevention of a French universal monarchy depended

increas
ingly on combining the states of Europe into a balance of power that could
effectively
block Frances expansionist policies. The balance against Louis XIV was
engineered
mainly by the Dutch. The most tireless of his enemies, and the one who did more
than any
other to checkmate him, was the Dutchman William III, the prince of Orange, who
in his
later years was king of England and Scotland as well.

Let us, after first surveying the Dutch in the seventeenth century, turn to
the British
Isles, where a momentous conflict occurred between Parliament and king. We
shall then
examine the French absolute monarchy under Louis XiV and conclude the
present chap
ter with the wars of Louis XTV particularly the War of the Spanish Succession, in
which
the collective resistance to French ambitions ultimately restored the European
balance
of power.

18. THE DUTCH REPUBLIC

Dutch Culture and Government

The ambassadors of kings, strolling beside a canal at The Hague, might on

occasion observe a number of burghers in plain black garments step out of a
boat and proceed to make a meal of cheese and herring on the lawn, and they
would recognize in these portly figures the provincial delegates of the Estates
General of the United Provinces, as the Dutch government was known in the
diplomatic language of the day. Though noblemen lived in the country, the Dutch
were the most bourgeois of all peoples. They were not the only republicans in
Europe, because the Swiss cantons, Venice, Genoa, and even England for a few
years were republics, but of all republics the United Provinces was by far the
most wealthy, the most flourishing, and the most important in international
diplomacy and culture.

The Dutch acquired a nationality of their own in the long struggle against
Spain, and
the memories of that war contributed to a pride in their own freedom and
independence.
In the later phases of the war with Spain, notably during the Thirty Years War,
they were
able to rely more on their wealth and diplomacy than on actual fighting, so that
during the
whole seventeenth century they enjoyed a degree of comfort, and of intellectual,
artistic, and commercial achievement unexcelled in Europe. The classic Dutch
poets and dramatists wrote at this time, making a literary language of what had
formerly been a dialect of Low German. Hugo Grotius
produced, in his Law of War and Peace, a pioneering treatise on international law.
Baruch
Spinoza, of a family of refugee Portuguese Jews, quietly turned out works of
philosophy,
examining the nature of reality, of human conduct, and of church and state.
Spinoza made
his living by grinding lenses; there were many other lens grinders in Holland;
some of them
developed the microscope, and some of these, in turn_LeeUWenhoek,
Swammerdam, and

others_peering through their microscopes and beholding for the first time the
world of
microscopic life, became founders of modern biological science. The greatest
Dutch scien
tist was Christian Huyghens (l629l695) who worked mainly in physics and
mathemat
ics; he improved the telescope (a Dutch invention), made clocks move with
pendulUms
discovered the rings of Saturn, and launched the wave theory of light. A less
famous writer,
Baithasar Belcicer, in his World Bewitched (1691) delivered a decisive blow
against the
expiring superstition of witchcraft. Meanwhile, the extraordinarily learned scholar
and ?rt
ist Anna Maria van Schurman (16071678) developed an important
5venteenthce1ry
argument for the education of women in her influential treatise The Learned Maid
or
Whether a Maid May Be Called a Scholar (1638).

But the most eternally fresh of the Dutch creationS, suffering from no
barrier of time
or language, were the superb canvases of the painters. Frans Hais produced bluff
portraits
of the cormnon people. Jan Verrneer threw a spell of magic and quiet dignity over
men, and
especially women, of the burgher class, many of whom he portrayed in typical
domestic
scenes. Rembrandt conveyed the mystery of human consciousness itself. in
Rembrandts
Masters of the Cloth Guild (seep. 152) we face a group of six men who seem
about to speak

from the canvas, inclined slightly forward, as intent on their business as judges
on the pro
ceedings in a courtroom. Such men conducted the affairs of Holland, in both
commerce and
government; intelligent, calculating, and honest but determined to drive a hard
bargain; the
sober black cloaks, with the clean white collars, set against the carved woodwork
and rich
table covering of the Cloth Hall, seem to suggest that personal vanity must yield
to collec
Uve undertakings and that personal simplicity must be maintained in the midst
of material opulence. And in Vermeers Geographer (see p. 156), painted in

1669, there appears not

only an immaculately scrubbed and dusted Dutch interior, but something of a
symbol of the
modem world in its youththe pale northern sunlight streaming through the
window, the
globe and the map, the dividers in the scholars right hand, instrument of science
and math
ematics, the tapestry flung over the table (or is it a new rug brought from Asia?),
the head
lifted in thought, and eyes resting on an invisible world of fresh discoveries and
opening
horizons. The same interest in the complexities of human character and the
details of house
hold objects appears in many of Vermeers paintings, including Girl Reading a
Letter at on
Open Window (seep. 154), which he painted in the late 1650s, The Milkmaid (c.
1660), and
The Artists Studio (e. 1665). Like other Dutch artists in this era, Vermeer
discovered and
portrayed the aesthetic pleasures in the common experiences of daily life.
Dutch paintings also showed certain characteristics of the wider
seventeenth-century
artistic style that came to be known as Baroque. The fascination with fighting,
the representation of interior spaces, the use of distinctive colors or subtle hues,
and a more naturalistic
image of human beings often shaped the distinctive appearance of Baroque
paintings.
In contrast to most Dutch artists, however, many of the best-known Baroque
painters
identified with the Catholic Church or the Counter Reformation. The Flemish
painter Peter

Paul Rubens was one prominent example of this identification with Catholicism n
the
Low Countries (see his Portrait of the Artist with Isabelle Brant on p. 153). Rubens
often
painted influential Catholic political figures as well as dramatic biblical scenes,
but art in
the Netherlands tended to emphasize the quotidian scenes of urban life rather
than the pas
sions of religious ecstasy or the grandeur of royal families.
In religion, after initial disputes, the Dutch Republic adopted toleration.
Early in the
seventeenth century the Dutch Calvinists divided. One group favored a
modification of
Calvinism, with a toning down of the doctrine of absolute predestination. This
more modet ate Calvinism drew its main support from the comfortable burghers and its
doctrines from a
theologian of Leyden named Arminius, whose ideas were condemned at an
international Calvinist synod in 1618. But beginning in 1632 the Arthinians
were tolerated. Rights were granted to the large Catholic minority. Jews had long
been welcomed in the republic and Christian sects despised everywhere else,
such as
the Mennonites, found a refuge in Dutch towns. Although none, of these people
had as many
political or economic rights as the Calvinists, the resulting mixture stimulated
both the
intellectual life and the commercial enterprise of the country.
The Dutch as early as 1600 had 10,000 ships, and throughout the
seventeenth century
they owned most of the shipping of northern Europe. They were the earners
between Spain,
France, England, and the Baltic. They also settled in Bordeaux to buy wines, lent
money to vintners, and soon owned many vineyards in France itself. They sailed
on every sea. They entered the Pacific by way of South America, where they
rounded Cape Horn and named it after Hoorn in Holland.
Organized in the East India Company of 1602, their merchants increasingly
replaced the
Portuguese in India and the Far East. In Java, in 1619, they founded the city of
Bataviathe
Latin name for Holland. (The city is now called Jakarta.) .
Not long after 1600 the Dutch reached Japan. But the Japanese, fearing
the political
consequences of Christian penetration, in 1641 expelled all other Europeans and
confined
the Dutch to limited operations on an island near Nagasaki. The Dutch remained
for over
two centuries the sole link of the West with Japan. In 1612 the Dutch founded
their first
settlement on Manhattan Island, and in 1621 they established a Dutch West India
Com

pany to exploit the loosely held riches of Spanish and Portuguese America. The
new West
India company also entered the expanding Atlantic slave trade and transported
enslaved
Africans to recently founded Dutch colonies at Pemambuco and Bahia in Brazil
(lost soon
thereafter) and at Curaao and Guiana in the Caribbean. In 1652 the Dutch
captured the
Cape of Good Hope in South Africa from the Portuguese. Dutch settlers soon
appeared.
Moving inland, they occupied the territory of the Khoilchoi and displaced or
enslaved the
people whose ancestors had lived there for centuries. These Dutch settlers mixed
with
French Huguenots and others in southern Africa and gradually became the
Afrikaner peo
ple, whose modern language and religion still reflect their mainly Dutch origins.
In 1609 the Dutch founded the Bank of Amsterdam. European money was
a chaos; coins were minted not only by great monarchs but also by small states
and cities in Germany and Italy, and even by private persons. In addition, under
inflationary pressures, kings and others habitually debased their coins by adding
more alloy, while leaving the old coins in circulation along with the
new. Anyone handling money thus accumulated a miscellany of uncertain value.
The Bank
of Amsterdam accepted deposits of such mixed money from all persons and from
all countries, assessed the gold and silver content, and, at rates of exchange
fixed by itself, allowed depositors to withdraw equivalent values in gold florins
minted by the Bank of Amsterdam.These were of known and unchanging weight
and purity. They thus became an internationally sought money, an international
measure of value, acceptable everywhere. Depositors were also allowed to draw
checks against their accounts. These conveniences, plus a safety of deposits
guaranteed by the Dutch government, attracted capital from all quarters and
made possible loans for a wide range of purposes. Amsterdam remained the
financial center of Europe until the French Revolution.
Under their republican government the Dutch enjoyed great freedom, but
it can hardly
be said that their form of government met all the requirements of a modern
state. The
seven provinces that sent representatives to the Estates General of the United
Provinces
were all jealous of their own independence. Each province had, as its executive,
an elected
stadholder, but there was no stadholder for the United Provinces as a whole. This
difficulty
Was Overcome by the fact that most of the various provinces usually elected the
head of the house of Orange as their own stadholder. This family had enjoyed
exceptional prestige
in the republic since the days of William the Silent and the wars for
independence, but the
prince of Orange, apart from being stadholder, was simply one of the feudal
noblemen of

the country. In general, however, the commercial class had more wealth than the
older
noble families, and affairs were usually managed by the burghers.
Politics in the Dutch Republic was a seesaw between the burghers,
pacifistic and
absorbed with business, and the princes of Orange, to whom the country owed
most of
its military security. When foreigners threatened invasion, the power of the
stadholder
increased. When all was calm, the stadholder could do little. The Peace of
Westphalia
produced a mood of confidence in the burghers, followed by a constitutional
crisis, in the
course of which the stadholder William II died, in 1650. No new stadholder was
elected
for 22 years. The burgher, civilian, and decentralizing tendencies prevailed.
In 1650, eight days after his father s death, the third William was born in
the house of
Orange, seemingly fated never to be stadholder and to pass his life as a private
nobleman
on his own estates. William ifi grew up to be a grave and reserved young man,
small and rather stocky, with thin, compressed lips and a determined spirit. He
learned to speak Dutch, German, English, and French with equal facility and to
understand Italian, Spanish, and Latin. He observed the
requirements of his religion, which was Dutch Calvinism, with sober regularity. He
had a strong dislike for everything magnificent or pompous; he lived plainly,
hated flattery, and took no pleasure in social conversation. In these respects he
was the opposite of his life long enemy the Sun King, whom he resembled only in
his diligent preoccupation with affairs. In 1677 William manied the king of
Englands niece, Mary Stuart.
Foreign Affairs: Conflict with the English and French
Meanwhile matters were not going favorably for the Dutch Republic. In 1651 the
revolu
tionary government then ruling England passed a Navigation Act. This act may
be con
sidered the first of a long series of political measures by which the British began
to build
their colonial empire. It was aimed against the Dutch carrying trade. It provided
that goods
imported into England and its dependencies must be transported on English
ships or on
ships belonging to the country exporting the gods. Because the Dutch were too
small a people to be great producers and exporters themselves, and lived largely
by carrying the goods of others, they saw in the new English policy a threat to
their economic existence. The Dutch and English soon entered into a series of
three wars, running with interruptions from 1652 to 1674 and generally inde
cisive, though in 1664 the English annexed New Amsterdam and renamed it New
York.

While thus assaulted at sea by the English, the Dutch were menaced on
land by the
French. Louis XIV made his first aggressive move in 1667, claiming the Spanish
Netheriands
and Franche-Comt by alleging certain rights of his Spanish wife, and
overrunning the
Spanish Netherlands with his army. The Dutch, to whom the Spanish Netherlands
were a
buffer against France, set into motion the mechanism of the balance of power.
Dropping tem
porarily their disputes with the English, they allied with them instead; and
because they were
able also to secure the adherence of Sweden, the resulting Triple Alliance was
sufficient to
give pause to Louis XIV, who withdrew from the Spanish Netherlands. But in 1672
Louis
XIV again rapidly crossed the Spanish Netherlands, attacked with forces five
times as large
as the Dutch, and occupied three of the seven Dutch provinces.
A popular clamor now arose among the Dutch for William of Orange,
demanding that the young prince, who was 22 years of age, be installed in the
old office of stadholder, in which his ancestors had defended them against Spain.
He was duly elected stadholder in six provinces. In 1673
these six provinces voted to make the stadholderate hereditary in the house of
Orange. William, during his whole reign in the Netherlands, attempted to
centralize and consolidate his government, put down the traditional liberties of
the provinces, and free himself from constitutional checks, moving generally in
the direction of absolute monarchy. He was unable, however, to go far in this
course, and the United Provinces remained a decentralized patrician republic
until 1795.
Meanwhile, to stave off the immediate menace of Louis Xlv, William
resorted to a
new manipulation of the balance of power. He formed an alliance this time with
the minor
powers of Denmark and Brandenburg (the small German state around Berlin) and
with the
Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs. Nothing could indicate more clearly the new
European
concern about the balance of power than this coming over of the Dutch to the
Habsburg
side. This alliance presented a forceful new challenge to Louis XIV and pushed
him into
negotiations that ended this phase of his expansionist wars. Peace was signed in
1678 (by
the treaty of Nimwegen), but only at the expense of Spain and the Holy Roman
Empire,
from which Louis XIV took the long coveted Franche-Comt, together with
another batch
of towns in Flanders (see map, p. 149). The Dutch preserved their territory intact.
In the next ten years came the great windfall of Williams life. In 1689 he
became king of England. He was now able to bring the British Isles into his

perpetual combinations agalnst France. Because the real impact of France was
yet to be felt, and the real bid of Louis XIV for universal monarchy was yet to be
made, and because the English at this time were rapidly gaining in strength, the
entrance of England was a decisive addition to the balance formed against
French expansion. In this way the constitutional upheavais in England, by
bringing a determined Dutchman to the
English throne, entered into the general stream of European affairs and helped to
assure
that western Europe and its overseas offshoots should not be dominated totally
by France.
19. BRITAIN: THE CIVIL WAR
After the defeat of the Spanish Armada and recession of the Spanish threat the
English
were for a time less closely involved with the affairs of the Continent. They
played no
significant part in the Thirty Years War and were almost the only European
people west
of Poland who were not represented at the Congress of Westphalia. At the time of
the
Westphalia negotiations in the 1640s they were in fact engaged in a civil war of
their own.
This English civil war was a milder variant of the Wars of Religion that desolated
France,
Germany, and the Netheriands. It was fought not between Protestants and
Catholics as
on the Continent, but between the more extreme or Calvinistic Protestants called
Puritans
and the more moderate Protestants, who adhered to the established Church of
England.
As in the wars on the Continent, religious differences were mixed
indistinguishably with
political and constitutional issues. As the Huguenots represented to some extent
feudal
rebeffiousness against the French monarchy, as German Protestants fought for
states rights
against imperial centralization, and the Calvinists of the Netherlands for
provinciai liber
ties against the king of Spain, so the Puritans asserted the rights of Parliament
against the
mounting claims of royaity in England.
The civil war in England took many lives, but was less destructive than
most such wars
on the Continent; and England escaped the worst horrors of the Wars of Religion.
The same
was not true of the British Isles as a whole. After 1603 the kingdoms of England
and Scotland,
while otherwise separate, were ruled by the same king; the kingdom of ireland
remained, as
before, a dependency of the English crown. Between England and Presbyterian
Scotland

there was constant friction, but the worst trouble was between England and
Catholic Ireland,
which was the scene of religious warfare as savage as that on the Continent.
England in the Seventeenth Century
For the English the seventeenth century was an age of great achievement,
during which
they made their debut as one of the chief peoples of modern Europe. In 1600
only 4 or
5 million persons, in England and Lowland Scotland, spoke the English language.
The
number did not rise rapidly for another century and a half. But the population
began to
spread. Religious discontents, reinforced by economic pressures, led to
considerable emi
gration. Twenty thousand Puritans settled in New England between 1630 and
1640, and a
similar number went to Barbados and other West India islands during these same
years. A
third stream, again roughly of the same size, but made up mainly of Scottish
Presbyterians,
settled in northern ireland under government auspices, driving away or
expropriating the native Celts. English Catholics were allowed by the home
government to settle in Maryland. A great many members of the Church of
England went to Virginia during and after the midcentury civil war, adding to the
small settlement made at Jamestown in 1607. Except for the movement to
northern Ireland, called the plantation of Ulster, these migrations took place
without much attention on the part of the government, through private initiative
organized in commercial companies. After the middle of the century the
government began deliberately to build an empire. New York was conquered
from the Dutch, Jamaica from the Spanish, and Pennsylvania and the Carolinas
were established. All the thirteen colonies except Georgia were founded before
1700, but there were at that time still less than half a million Europeans and
Africans in British North America.
The English also, hice the Dutch, French, and Spanish at the time, were
creating their
national culture. Throughout western Europe the nationai languages,
encroaching upon
international Latin on the one hand and local dialects on the other, were
becoming new
linguistic vehicles for the expression of thought and feeling. William Shakespeare
helped
to shape the evolving English language through the enduring influence of his
great plays,
including the famous tragedies Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Learall of which
were first
performed and published in the early years of the seventeenth century. John
Milton pub
lished his influential epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained later in this
saine

century, after the bitter confficts of the English Civil War. Shakespeare and Milton
pro
jected their complex conceptions of human experience, aspirations, and tragedy
with the
imaginative power of both new and old words. The English classical literature,
rugged in
form but deep in content, vigorous yet subtle in insight, majestic, abundant, and
sonorous
in expression, was almost the reverse of French classical writing, with its virtues
of order,
economy, propriety, and graceful precision. Proud of their literary culture and
their own
great writers, the English could never thereafter quite yield to French standards,
nor be
dazzled or dumbfounded, as some peoples were, by the cultural glories of the
Age of Louis
MV. There were no seventeenth-century painters comparable to those on the
Continent,
but in music it was the age of Thomas Campion and Henry Purcell, and in
architecture the
century closed with the great buildings of Christopher Wren.
Economically the English were enterprising and affluent, though in 1600
far outdistanced by the Dutch. They had a larger and more productive country
than the Dutch, and were therefore not as limited to purely mercantile and
seafaring occupations. Coal was mined around Newcastle, but it was not yet a
leading source of English wealth. The great industry was the growing of sheep
and
manufacture of woolens, which were the main export. Spinning and weaving
were done
mostly by workers in the country, under the putting-out system, and organized
by mer
chants according to the methods of commercial capitalism. Since 1553 the
English had
traded with Russia by way of the White Sea; they were increasingly active in the
Baltic
and eastern Mediterranean; and with the founding of the East India Company, in
1600,
they competed with the Dutch in assaulting the old Portuguese monopoly in India
and
East Asia. But profitable as such overseas operations were becoming, the main
wealth of
England was still in the land. The richest men were not merchants but landlords,
and the
landed aristocracy formed the richest class.
Background to the Civil War: Parliament and the Stuart Kings
In England, as elsewhere in the seventeenth century, the kings cashed with their
old medi
eval representative institutions. In England the old institution, Parliament, won
out against
the king. But this was not the unique feature in the English development. In
Germany the

estates of the Holy Roman Empire triumphed against the emperor, and much the
same
thing, as will be seen, occurred in Poland. But on the Continent the triumph of
the old
representative institutions generally meant political dissolution or even anarchy.
Suc
cessful govemments were generally those in which kingly powers increased; this
was the
strong tendency of the time, evident even in the Dutch Republic after 1672
under William
of Orange. The unique thing about England was that Parliament, in defeating the
king,
arrived at a workable form of government. Govenunent remained strong but
came under
parliamentary control. This determined the character of modern England and
launched
into the history of Europe and of the worid the great movement of liberalism and
repre
sentative institutions.
The violent struggles that ultimately produced Englands new political
order emerged
from the conflicting ambitions of the Stuart kings and the most powerful social
groups in
the English Parliament. In 1603, on the death of Queen Elizabeth, the English
crown was inherited by the son of Mary Stuart, James VI of Scotland. As a
descendant of Henry VII he became king of England also, taking there the title of
James I. James was a philosopher of royal absolutism. He had
even written a book on the subject, The True Law of Free Monarchy. By a free
monar
chy James meant a monarchy free from control by Parliament, churchmen, or
laws and
customs of the past It was a monarchy in which the king, as fther to his people,
looked
after their welfare as he saw fit, standing above all parties, private interests, and
pressure
groups. He even declared that kings drew their authority from God and were
responsible to
God alone, a doctrine known as the divine right of kings.
Any ruler succeeding Elizabeth would probably have had trouble with
Parliament,
which had shown signs of restlessness in the last years of her reign but had
deferred to her
as an aging woman and a national symbol. She had maintained peace within the
country
and fought off the Spaniards, but these very accomplishments persuaded many
people that
they could safely bring their grievances into the open: James I was a foreigner, a
Scot, who
lacked the touch for dealing with the English and who was moreover a royal
pedant, the
wisest fool in Christendom, as he was uncharitably called. Not content with the
actual

or implicit methods of political control, as Elizabeth had been, he red the

Parliament tire
some lectures on the royal rights. He also was in constant need of money
because the wars
against Spain had left a considerable debt. James was far from economical, and,
in any
case, in an age of rising prices, he could not live within the fixed and customary
revenues
of the English crown. These were of medieval character, increasingly qualnt
under the new
national and international conditions.
Neither to James I nor to his son Charles I, who succeeded him in 1625,
would Parlia
ment grant adequate revenue. It distrosted them both, partly for financial
reasons and partly
on religious grounds. Many members of Parliament were Puritans, whose
Calvinist beliefs
made them dissatisfied with the organization and doctrine of the Church of
England.
Elizabeth had tried to hush up religious troubles, but James threatened to harry
the Puritans
out of the land, and Charles supported the Church hierarchy, which under
Archbishop Laud
sought to enforce religious conformity. Many members of Parliament were also
lawyers,
who feared that the common law of England, the historic or customary law, was
in danger.
They disliked the prerogative courtsthe Star Chamber set up by Henry VII to
settle
disputes without the deliberations of a jury and the High Commission set up by
Elizabeth to
ensure conformity to the theology of the Church of England. They heard with
trepidation the
new doctrine that the sovereign king could make laws and decide cases at his
own discretion.
Last but not least, practically all members of Parliament were property owners.
Landowners,
supported by the merchants, feared that if the king succeeded in raising taxes on
his own
authority, their wealth would be insecure. Hence there were multiple causes for a
growing
parliamentary resistance.
In England the Parliament was so organized as to make resistance
effective. There was only one Parliament for the whole country. There were no
provincial or local estates, as in the Dutch Republic, Spain, France,Germany, and
Poland. All parliamentary opposition was therefore concentrated in one place. In
this one Parliament, there were only two houses, the House of Lords
and the House of Commons. The landed interest dominated in both houses, the
noblemen
in the Lords and the gentry in the Commons. In the Commons the gentry, who
formed the

bulk of the aristocracy, mixed with representatives of the merchants and the
towns. Indeed
the towns frequently chose country gentlemen to represent them. These
connections suggest why the houses of Parliament (especially the Commons) did
not accentuate, as did the
estates on the Continent, the class division within the country.
Nor was the church present in Parliament as a separate force. Before
Henry VIlls
break with Rome the bishops and abbots together had formed a large majority in
the House
of Lords. Now there were no abbots left, for there were no monasteries. The
House of